My dearest Mrs. Martin,—­I should have answered your note days ago!  If you saw how I am in a plague of industry just now, and not a moment unspotted!—­how, for instance, I kept an ‘Examiner’ newspaper (sent to us from London) three days on the table before I could read it,—­you would make an allowance for me.  It’s a sort of furia!  I must get over so much writing, or I shall be too late for the summer’s printing.  If it isn’t done by June, what will become of me?  I shall go back to Italy in disgrace, and considerably poorer than I need be, which is of more practical consequence.  So I fag.  Then there’s an hour and a half in the morning for Penini’s lessons.  We breakfast at nine, and receive nobody till past four.  This will all prove to you two things, dearest friend—­first (I hope) that I’m pardonable for making you wait a few days longer than should have been, and secondly that I’m tolerably well.  Yes, indeed.  Since our arrival in this house, after just the first, when there was some frost, we have had such a miraculous mildness under the name of winter, that I rallied as a matter of course, and for the last month there has been no return of the spitting of blood, and no extravagance of cough.  I have persisted with cod’s liver oil, and I look by no means ill, people assure me, and so I may assure you.  But I am not very strong, and was a good deal tired after a two hours’ drive which I ventured on a week ago in the Bois de Boulogne.  The small rooms, and deficiency of air resulting from them, make a long shutting up a more serious thing than I find it in Florence in our acres of apartment.  But it is easy to mend strength when only strength is to be mended, and I, for one, get strong again easily.  I only hope that the cold is not returning.  The air was sharp yesterday and is to-day; but it’s February, and the spring is at the doors, and we may hope with reason....

What do you say of the peace as a final peace?  You are not at least vexed, as so many English are, that we can’t fight a little for glory to reinstate our reputation.  You’ll excuse that.  Still, I can’t help feeling disappointed in the peace—­chiefly, perhaps, because I hoped too much from the war.  Will nothing be done after all for Italy? nothing for Poland?

You want books.  Read About’s ‘Tolla.’  He is a new writer, and his book is exquisite as a transcript of Italian manners.  Then read Octave Feuillet.  There is much in him.

Will there be war with America, dear Mr. Martin?  Never will I believe it till I hear the cannons.

Talking of what we should believe, it appears that Mrs. Trollope has thrown over Hume[48] from some failure in his moral character in Florence.  I have had many letters on the subject.  I have no doubt that the young man, who is weak and vain, and was exposed to gross flatteries from the various unwise coteries at Florence who took him up, deserves to be thrown over.  But his mediumship is undisproved, as far as I can understand.  It is simply a physical faculty—­he is quite an electric wire.  At Florence everybody is quarrelling with everybody on the subject.  I thought I would tell you.